Skip to content

techUK: Supporting a UK that can scale

13 October 20264 min read
News
Decorative image — no alt text needed

Why scale-ups matter

The new UK government aims to deliver “growth in every postcode.” Scale-up companies – firms with consistent, rapid growth in turnover or employees over a three-year period – are the engines of that economic growth.

Scale-ups are firms growing at significant rates in terms of turnover, headcount, or both. There are not many of them. The ScaleUp Institute's 2025 Annual Review counted a record 44,595 UK scale-ups, up from 26,985 in 2013, just 0.8% of the UK business population.

Their economic weight is far larger. Those firms generate half of all SME output, worth £2.19 trillion. Add the 20,980 businesses in the scaling pipeline and that rises to 71% of SME output, or £3.1 trillion. The Industrial Strategy's eight priority sectors, including digital and technologies, make up 42% of the scaling population, generating £1.7 trillion and employing 2.6 million people. Scale-ups are also likely to be highly innovative; the same report from the ScaleUp Institute found that 9 out of 10 had introduced or improved a product, service or process in the last 3 years. Many of these scale-ups are either in the technology sector or technology-enabled, using software, data, AI and other tools to transform their fields.

Tech scale-ups play a vital role in this story. In everything from AI to semiconductors, healthcare to robotics, you find scale-ups: fast-growing companies that turn new ideas into products, jobs and investment. They are a small share of UK businesses but deliver an outsized share of output, and have the potential to provide a lot more if they are given the right support to operate effectively.

Scale-ups at techUK

techUK's own membership tells the same story. According to Beauhurst data, more than 110 techUK members have been classified as scale-ups at one time, with over 30 having reached that status in the last two years, and over 30 more feature on high-growth lists such as the Sunday Times 100. Many more have the potential to scale rapidly, with large funding rounds recently closed or underway.

Behind the numbers are companies bringing new technologies to market. Scale-ups are twice as likely as their peers to be involved in innovative activity, and are early adopters of emerging technologies.

Our Meet the Scalers series shows what that looks like in practice, with founders and leaders sharing their own stories of growing a business. This includes;

  • AI orchestration platform Great Wave AI, an ambitious SME and member of techUK's Scale-up Council that has scaled over the past three years to reach £1 million in ARR.

  • Consultancy Opencast, who have grown from a team of 80 people generating £6 million in revenue in 2029 to over 700 employees generating £70 million in revenue today.

  • Clue Software, which after being founded in the late 1980s, saw a second stage of growth, completing its Series A funding in 2021.

  • Quantum Dice, an Oxford University spin out, which used Innovate UK grant funding to unlock its first venture capital round in 2021.

  • Decision intelligence platform Quantexa, which has grown extensively from its early start up days into a global business with 19 offices, over 850 employees, and a $2.6bn valuation.

  • Adarga, a scale-up that specialises in applying cutting-edge technology into defence security and resilience that, after 10 years in the UK, has recently begun expanding into the US and Europe.

Their stories also show where some barriers remain: later-stage growth capital, access to talent and compute, and public procurement that too often funds pilots that cannot scale.

techUK’s support for scale-ups

techUK represents over 1,100 members, from start-ups to multinationals. The breadth of our membership gives us a vantage point that few other trade associations can match. Our membership includes software developers, hardware manufacturers, and firms from across the IS-8 sectors that are adopting and deploying these tools and services.

Scale-ups sit at a unique intersection. A quantum hardware firm needs patient capital and deep tech expertise; a defence AI company needs procurement that works; a health tech scale-up needs regulation and adoption that keep pace. Our technology, sector and policy teams work together to see the whole picture across five areas that are crucial to scale-up growth – Capital, Talent, Regulation, Procurement, and Trade.

Through initiatives such as our 'Meet the Investors' series, techUK is able to convene SMEs looking to access finance with expert advisors and investors, helping them to make the connections they need.

Within techUK, scale-up members are represented by our Scale-up Council, a collection of scale-ups, ambitious SMEs and wider support organisations that have come together to guide our scale-up work and with the aim to further support the growth and development of the UK’s technology scale-up ecosystem by providing a platform for industry leaders, policymakers, and stakeholders to collaborate. In 2025, techUK published the Scale-up Action Plan, setting out how scale-ups are vital in achieving the government's growth ambitions and delivering the Industrial Strategy.

Our scale-ups reflect the full breadth of the IS-8 sectors across advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, creative industries, defence, digital and technologies, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services. They also operate at the cutting edge of technological development, including the 6 frontier technologies named in the digital and technologies sector plan; advanced connectivity technologies (ACT), artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security, engineering biology, quantum technologies, and semiconductors.

Backing the UK's next wave of growth

techUK is continuing to advocate for pro-scale-up policies that make it easier to start and scale a business, and more attractice to stay here. The Autumn Budget is a chance to back them on capital, talent, regulation, procurement and trade, and provide the sustained growth the economy needs. Our submission to HM Treasury includes recommendations to make it easier to scale in the UK, including cutting visa costs for skilled workers, pro-scale up tax policies such as restoring VCT up-front relief to 30% and raising the company age-limits for eligibility for the EIS and VCT schemes, and incentivising greater amounts of domestic capital into UK equities.

Our recent Economy 2030 report looks at key enablers of growth and scaling, including digital infrastructure, regulation, investment, public procurement, and regional ecosystems. It contains a number of recommendations intended to support the growth of the UK economy into the 2030s and beyond.

For more information on any of the above, you can explore our scale up work and our policy priorities on our website, and please reach out to the team below if you would like to be more involved.